


A Jar of Lucky Stars

by avoidingavoidance



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Body Horror, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Ghosts, M/M, Magic, Other, Smoking, Supernatural Elements, supernatural horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-15 10:19:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 14,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3443543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avoidingavoidance/pseuds/avoidingavoidance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of unrelated short drabbles, usually fantasy- or magic-based, each written from a one-word prompt folded into a lucky star and kept in a jar on my desk. All genres, all pairings, some shippy, some not, occasional horror and sexuality. (Basically just a length-practice free-for-all whenever I'm blocked.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Colubrine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Colubrine: (adj.) of or resembling a snake._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> (dedicated to dani and they know why)

This is the kind of thing you hear about in fairy tales. Stories that happened a thousand years ago, with knights and princes and kingdoms, people you’ll never know in places you’ll never see.

This is _certainly_ not the kind of thing that happens in 2015 in the stupid manmade forest behind the fucking _art school._

At least, that’s what Jean Kirschtein is desperately telling himself to cope with the fact that not only did he just trip over a—what was he, an _anaconda?_ —an _anaconda_ in the twenty-foot-wide bay of trees behind the art school, the anaconda then proceeded to get pissed off enough to _turn into one of his classmates._

“This isn’t happening,” Jean wheezes as he scrabbles back along the cigarette-littered forest floor, rain pouring harder now and soaking his carefully-styled hair until his bangs flop lifelessly against his forehead. _“This isn’t happening—”_

“I appreciate the denial,” Eren huffs, tossing aside a cigarette put out by the rain. “But don’t you think it’d work better if you weren’t, like, right here?”

_“You came out of a snake.”_

“Look, can you stand up, at least? Maybe run screaming?” Eren runs his hand through his own dripping bangs with a put-upon sigh. He extends his hand to Jean, who understandably flinches away. With a roll of his eyes, Eren gestures exasperatedly and lets his hand fall again. “And I didn’t _come out_ of the snake, I _am_ the snake.”

If Jean wasn’t already sheet-white from the rain, he’d pale further. His fingers sink into the mud in search of some kind of anchor, something to keep him from passing the fuck out. “Y-you’re. A s-snake?”

“Sometimes, yes. In case you couldn’t already tell.”

Swallowing heavily, Jean watches Eren carefully as he pulls himself to his feet finally, thoroughly drenched and mud-splattered. And to think, all he’d wanted was a goddamn cigarette break. He’d always suspected that there was something different about Eren, something mysterious and hot, but _this_ is something else entirely.

“What...” Jean licks his lips, trying not to tower over Eren for once. “What are you?”

Eren sniffs and shrugs, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Snakeshifter.”

Jean’s brow furrows. _“Snakeshifter.”_

“ _Yes._ Like...” Eren huffs and waves a hand lamely. “It’s a play on words, okay? Shapeshifter, snakeshifter...”

A long, awkward pause blossoms between them, filled with the sound of rain bouncing off the leaves and soaking through the pungent loam.

“That’s the dumbest shit I have ever heard.”

A spark of aggression fills Eren’s violently green eyes, but he blinks it away and clicks his teeth, brushing off Jean’s brashness. “Whatever, fuck off.”

Jean crosses his arms, trying not to give away that he’s shivering. “Aren’t you, um. Afraid that I’ll, like, uh.”

“Tell people?” Jean nods, and Eren snorts, pushing his bangs off his face again. “You go ahead and tell people that a guy in your photography class is a snake in his free time. Let me know how that works out for you.”

Fair point. Jean concedes with a shrug, giving Eren another good, long once-over.

“In that case,” Jean mumbles, shifting to perch on an artfully-placed boulder. “Tell me about it. The snake thing.”

Eren raises his thick eyebrows, but there’s nothing deceptive or dangerous in Jean’s posture. Just honest curiosity. So he shrugs and starts at the beginning.


	2. Somnivagance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Somnivagance: (n.) the act of traveling in one’s sleep; dreaming of wandering._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> (dedicated to dani and they know why)

Marco has always wandered in his sleep.

Not like sleepwalking, though sometimes we wonders if that might be easier.

No, when Marco sleeps, he truly _wanders._ It’s like his soul leaves his body and travels to the furthest reaches of the earth. Sometimes beyond. 

He’s been to every dark jungle cave in the southern tips of the world, to the frosty reaches of what’s left of the poles. (Shame about global warming, he thinks. Maybe if they could see what he has.) He’s been to the moon a fair few times, and to Mars a handful. One or twice, he thinks he might have seen what’s under the ice-blocked surface of Europa, but there’s no way to be sure. Wherever he was, its inhabitants were quite polite, although distinctly inhuman.

When he wanders, he wonders what people make of him. Some greet him as normal, asking where his bag is or why he isn’t wearing shoes. Once or twice, he’s heard people swear up and down that he’s a ghost. It’s not too bad an idea. He likes being effervescent. It makes his real life seem more constant, more stable, although significantly less fantastical. 

It’s late summer in the southern reaches of South Korea this time, which means _rain._ It’s fine, though. It’s not like Marco’s actually going to be wet when he wakes up.

He’s hopping across a line of smooth rocks over what he suspects is usually a calm stream, dodging its flooded rapids as he balances carefully, when he glances up and sees an absolutely _drenched_ kid staring at him from under a tree. Maybe about his age, mid-to-late teens. The boy’s jaw is hanging open, and his glasses are fogged and beaded with rainwater, but the tree provides decent coverage from the rain.

Smiling widely, Marco speeds it up and jumps across to the boy, landing next him in a wet _squish_ of the mud. Dark flecks of sodden earth splatter onto the boy’s rainboots, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Hi there,” Marco chirps, reaching behind himself to grip his elbows. “What’s your name?” The boy tilts his head and squints. Tilting back onto his heels, Marco mirrors the gesture, wondering what this boy thinks of him. His blonde hair is pasted to his forehead with water, and he looks a little on the scrawny side.

When the boy speaks, it’s hesitant, his accent thick. “You are... dead here?”

Marco giggles before he can help himself, but he shakes his head. “I’m asleep.”

“Asleep,” the boy repeats, arching a thin eyebrow. Marco nods.

“I, um.” He pauses to chew on his lip, glancing up into the dripping leaves sheltering them. “I wander?”

The boy squints harder. “Wander,” he says slowly, before he swings a backpack Marco hadn’t noticed off his shoulder and digs what looks like a wide calculator out of it. He presses a few buttons on it, sheltering it under a small notebook, then makes a soft, understanding sound and mutters something that sounds a lot like _‘hangwan.’_ Marco doesn’t pretend to understand. Instead, he stretches over to peer at the little thing. Turns out, it’s a translator. He grins and nods, leaning back out of the boy’s space.

Before he can speak again, the world gives a soft shudder. The boy doesn’t notice. Marco sighs.

Time to go.

“Hey,” he says, grinning widely when the boy blinks up at him. He points to himself and continues, “My name is Marco.” 

The boy’s brow furrows for a moment, before he points to himself and says something that sounds like _‘Jan.’_ John, maybe? Jean? Marco smiles and waves as the world starts to fade around him.

“See you next time!”

Before the blonde can respond, Marco’s eyes open to the familiar glow-in-the-dark starscape above his own bed, dry and warm and content to have made a new friend.


	3. Sciophobia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sciophobia: (n.) a fear of shadows._
> 
> **warnings:** supernatural horror, hauntings, body horror. set in the distant past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

“The poor dear,” Marco’s mother always says, with that same undertone of pity and disbelief that leads Marco to keep his mouth shut every time. “Ever since the execution, he’s been afraid of his own shadow, I swear it.”

“It’s not _my_ shadow,” Marco mumbles every time, but his mother hears only what she wants to, and what she wants to hear is the crooning of her friends, pity and gossip tittering out from between their yellowed teeth.

When her friends leave, Marco’s mother goes back to pretending it isn’t happening, pretending that the witch down the lane is _actually_ dead.

“ _Really,_ Marco,” she says as she walks through his room and blows out the bright array of lamps keeping him safe. His heart skips a beat, then two, and he stares directly into her eyes so he doesn’t have to see the dark silhouette of her slender hand on the wall. “Reginald is a _butler,_ not a carpenter. Why do you want to move your bed against the wall? It’s fine where it is, darling.”

That’s not true, Marco doesn’t say. It’s no use fighting her, not even when his heart is pounding and his mouth is dry because it’s a full moon tonight, and his curtains aren’t thick enough to block out the milky moonlight spelling his demise.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she huffs as she blows out the last lantern, before turning and striding out of his room. The bright train of her dress filters along the dark rug, then around the corner and out into the hallway.

It takes him a long moment to get up and close the door before he takes off his night coat and climbs into his bed.

Marco isn’t afraid of the dark. In fact, if the room was pitch-black, he thinks that would be better.

He lies on his side, on the relatively safer side facing the door, away from the window. His eyes adjust to the gloom as the moon crests over the house, pouring razor-edged silver into the still dark of his room, and Marco’s already starting to sweat and shake.

Time ticks by as if caught in tar, and the light of the moon shifts across his carpet, growing brighter and paler the further it sinks toward the damnably distant mountains.

He sees her feet first. He _always_ sees her feet first, as if she’s hung high above the arch of his tall window. Bare, dangling lifeless but for a subtle twitch just when he’s begun to wonder if it’s all in his head. His breath picks up and he doesn’t _dare_ turn around again. He won’t ever make that mistake again.

Time ticks by as if it’s _trying_ to drive him mad, every second on the clock like a hammer strike against metal in his panicked ears. The moon sinks lower and the light reveals the shorn edge of her dress, her toes flexing and curling and coming back to life.

When the shade of her sharp, claw-like nails falls into stretched, distorted relief against the door to his bedroom, she begins to whisper to him again, cracked and gurgling and _malicious,_ and Marco can’t look away from her, even as he starts sobbing with the terror she digs into his heart from where she hovers dead and horrible behind him.

He can’t look away from her too-thin waist, from the sharp angles of her jittery fingers reaching over him, beckoning to him.

He can’t look away from the silhouette of her snapped neck strung up by the rope, from the ragged, matted strands of her hair shivering under her tilted head.

He knows she’s _grinning_ when the treacherous moon alights upon the mountains and illuminates her in perfect relief through the awful, too-clean window, hanging behind him and waiting, waiting, always _waiting_ for him to make the mistake of turning around again, of opening himself up to her again, of giving her the chance to leave yet more scars on him.

The scabbed-over imprint of her nails burns on his chest over the telltale thunder of his straining heart, collecting the salt of his own dripping sweat and tears as he curls in on himself and whimpers for mercy.

_‘you should never h av e t old t h em m ar co’_

“I kn-know,” he sobs, wet and piteous. “I-I’m _s-sorry.”_

When morning brings with it dark, sullen clouds, Marco breathes a shuddering sigh of relief. Not enough light for her haunting to follow him through the day.

It’s not his own shadow Marco fears.

It’s Mina’s.


	4. Sanative

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sanative: (adj.) having the power to cure; healing or restorative._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

Jean isn’t a crazy man. At least, not by common definition. He’s never been abducted by aliens or seen ghosts or anything like that. Shit, the craziest thing he’s done recently was deciding to go on this hike by himself. Not the best idea, especially given the unstable and _crumbly_ nature of the damp ground beneath him on this particular leg of the trail.

He would have assumed that this is the end for him. He’d rolled so far down the rocky slope, after all, and there had been _so_ much blood.

There’s no blood anymore.

The hiker on the lower path that he’d almost bowled over is talking to him, but Jean’s still trying to cope with the now-unbroken, entirely clean span of his own thigh under the man’s freckled hands.

_“Wh-what—”_

“I’m sorry,” the man says, a flush rising to his cheeks. His dark bangs stick to his forehead with sweat and humidity, and he leans closer even as Jean leans away. “I-I’m sorry, you just—there’s no cell signal out here, and you could’ve died, u-um—”

Jean gapes up at the man, who finally seems to realize that his fingers are still spread under the torn fabric of Jean’s pants, gripping his narrow, completely-intact thigh. He pulls his hands back with a slight jerk and stutters more, his flush darkening.

_“What the fuck?”_ About as eloquent as Jean usually manages.

“U-um,” the brunette sputters, reaching a shaking hand up to scratch his head nervously. “Y-you, um. I think you should be okay to continue. Uh. W-we can walk together? If you like? This path is almost over, and it’s—uh, it’s easier. Th-than the one you were on.”

Jean stares for a moment longer, still panting slightly, before he flops onto his back and wonders if he’s gone completely insane.

“What the _fuck.”_

“Oh,” the man says, leaning over Jean to catch his gaze. “My name’s Marco. Please don’t tell anyone about, um. What I did.”

Barking a shrill laugh, Jean slaps his hands over his face and shakes his head rather than respond. He can _hear_ the man fidgeting beside him, so he mumbles, “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

Marco breathes a soft laugh. “I guess not, no.”

Jean lets his hands fall to the side again and stares up at his savior, who’s rubbing the back of his neck and biting his lip around a smile, haloed by warm sunlight dripping from between the leaves above them. He’s still got a little spray of Jean’s blood across his cheek, already starting to congeal, so Jean reaches up and chips it away with his thumbnail.

“Thanks for, uh. Whatever you did. Assuming I’m not dead or dreaming.”

“Oh, sure,” Marco replies, his smile widening. He stands and reaches his magical hand down to help Jean stand. As he hauls the blonde to his feet, he asks, “Sorry, what was your name?”

“Shit, my bad. It’s Jean.”

As Jean’s brushing leaves off his ass, Marco grins and nods. “Nice to meet you, Jean. Um, please be careful on the high trails.”

Jean snorts. “Like I’ll ever fucking go hiking again.”

The continue along the low path, chatting shyly and awkwardly, and once they reach the parking lot, they exchange phone numbers before they part ways, with Jean insisting that he at least buy Marco dinner for not letting him bleed to death in a forest.


	5. Silvicolous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Silvicolous: (adj.) growing in or inhabiting woodlands._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

Marco’s always had a sneaking suspicion that something lives in the forest bordering his family’s farm. And not just squirrels or deer or bears, either. Something stranger, _wilder._ Something that watches with intelligent eyes that shine like a cat’s in the night, something that knows how to plan, how to anticipate. 

Something that knows how to pick the lock on the pantry shed.

He has a few solid reasons for suspecting this, not the least of which are the carved-open, empty cans of spaghetti and meatballs littering the shed’s floor, clinking quietly against the toe of his boot.

It takes a few months to catch the creature off-guard. Whatever it is, it’s smart as a whip, and about four times as fast. At best, he can barely catch a glimpse of the thing in his periphery before it’s gone. If Marco were his father, he’d take to bringing a shotgun with him every night, but Marco has always been much softer in his obsessions. 

So he keeps his Chef Boyardee-loving friend to himself, taking trips into town to make sure he’s always stocked on spaghetti and meatballs, and his family grows increasingly concerned that he’s losing his mind as he draws ever closer to learning his burgling friend’s patterns.

The first straight-on glimpse he catches could have easily ended in his death.

Instead, his friend’s sharp teeth quickly retreat behind chapped lips, and the narrow window rattles as the creature squeezes out of it with a worrisome-sounding, sickly organic _crack._

Mesmerized by those piercing, brilliant green eyes, Marco lies awake that night wondering if the wild man raiding their pantry speaks English.

The next time the bell he’d rigged to his friend’s usual path jingles, Marco’s ready.

As he’d feared, the man’s shoulder is dislocated still, his arm hanging limp by his side. The window is still open, because Marco knows better than to corner a wild thing, and his hands are lifted, fingers spread as he crouches in the corner of the pantry and tries to make soothing sounds.

His friend stares at him out of the dark, eyes wide and almost hypnotizing, his good hand wrapped tight around a half-rent can slowly dripping spaghetti onto the wood floor.

“You’re hurt,” Marco murmurs quietly, slowly, hands still raised where his friend can see them. “Can I help you?”

The wild man doesn’t reply. He just stares.

“Um.” Marco licks his lips, shifting cautiously. The drag of his boot makes his friend startle, backing quickly into the opposite corner. “O-oh, sorry, sorry,” Marco sputters, his own heart pounding too. Not out of fear, but out of excitement, out of curiosity. “Sorry. Uh, d’you understand me?”

“I’m not stupid,” the wild man spits, curling in on himself. His shoulder must ache, though, because he hisses quietly. “You humans always assume fae are dumb.”

“Is that what you are?” Marco breathes, unable to prevent a smile from spreading across his face. “Are you a fairy?”

“ _Fae._ Woodlands fae. I have a _name,_ too, I’m not some housebug little brownie twink.”

“Oh,” Marco replies carefully, although he’s entirely perplexed by what his friend is saying. “I have a name too, it’s Marco.”

A pause. The wild man, the _fae_ sighs and drops his ruined can, running his good hand through his dark, shaggy hair. “Eren.”

“I-is that your name?”

_“Yes.”_

“O-okay, okay.” Marco takes a deep breath and stands cautiously, his numb feet filling with pins and needles from holding his position for so long. “Eren. You’re hurt, can I help you?”

Eren squints, his bright gaze darkening slightly, before he gives an annoyed _whuff_ and nods.

After the painful shock that is having his shoulder relocated, Eren flees again, but it doesn’t take more than a week for him to come back for more Chef Boyardee, even if Marco’s still there with a million eager questions.

Eventually, Eren starts coming more for the company of Marco’s pretty laugh and soft smile than the canned pasta.


	6. Adaquare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Adaquare: (v.) to water, supply with water, bring water to._
> 
> warnings: implied sexuality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> (there is an adam sandler movie from the 90s called 'waterboy' just in case i'm dating myself here)

It’s not Marco’s fault that he catches shit from his classmates for being the soccer team’s water boy. You’d think they’d be more understanding, though. He used to be a damn good player until the field’s slippery grass put a pretty nasty end to his right knee, and thus his budding career.

Maybe they crack jokes because everyone had expected him to retire altogether. Maybe it’s because water boys are basically mandatory teasing material. Maybe it’s that no one’s serious in their ribbing, and they just want him to feel involved in their own weird way. Who knows.

Marco doesn’t really care either way. In fact, he forgets all about his classmates’ chiding whenever the team’s star offensive player rolls up drenched in sweat and reeking of crushed grass, his face flushed and lit up with a brilliant grin. 

Water boy or not, Jean always has a smile for him and a rude gesture for the teasing members of the team, and that alone is more than enough reason for Marco to stay on with the team in any possible capacity.

It probably helps that most of the water Marco gives Jean ends up dumped over the blonde’s overheated face, dripping through his mostly-transparent shirt, streaming down his tense abdomen when he pulls his shirt up to rub the sweat and mud off his brow.

The crooked grin Jean shoots him around the soaked, filthy hem of his shirt absolutely helps. Especially when his loose shorts sag a little past the points of his bony hips, bruised dark from brutal hip-checks, damp fabric coming dangerously close to revealing a very different kind of bruise much lower than is really prudent. 

Marco always has a return-fire smirk for Jean, his eyebrow quirking suggestively as his warm gaze drags down the drenched expanse of his somewhat-secret boyfriend’s flat stomach, across the soft trail of hair teasing into well-known territory, before his eyes flick back up to where Jean’s tongue sneaks out and wets his dry lips. 

If anyone notices Marco reaching out to swat Jean’s ass playfully as he jogs back out onto the field, they might not think anything of it, but the sting of Marco’s hidden handprint from the night before still puts an obvious pep in Jean’s step.

Yeah, there are notable benefits to being the team’s water boy, and if putting up with Reiner’s bad Adam Sandler jokes means Marco gets to watch Jean awkwardly try to force down a growing half-chub four times a practice, so be it.


	7. Arboricolous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Arboricolous: (adj.) that which grows on or lives in trees._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

There is indisputably a unique kind of nature magic that flickers beneath the shaded canopy of old forests. A timeless magic, dark and beautiful, one that lived amongst the trees long before humankind came thundering past and that will remain long after we are gone. Those whose spirits carry this magic generally care not for the comings and goings of man; mortality is evanescent, naught but the brief shimmer of sand to the eternal.

Some, though, feel a strange sort of compassion watching men struggle for relevance in the vastness of the world they live in. Some view humans as more than bone meal for the towering forests, more than a pressing threat to the indomitable spirit of the woods. Something more than a cheap, fragile toy.

Ymir is not a _thing._ Ymir is an essence, a presence, a wild and invulnerable breath of life wound from the deepest roots to the brilliant tops of every tree. Ymir never had a name before the tiniest glimmer of human life whispered the word as she reached between the dark leaves and curled her thin, pale fingers into a trickling stream of the unknowable.

As all the dying do, this shining ember passed, but the name lingered in her enchanting wake. Ymir finds that they _like_ having a name. 

A mirror flash half an eternity later whispers the name again, thick with dripping lifeblood and glowing like stained gold in the leaf-mute summer sun, but her tender grasp around a force no mortal should understand resonates even as that whisper shivers into a dying breath.

Ymir watches for the second time as this star-crossed spark feeds the tree under which she passed, a lost casualty in yet another conflict Ymir does not have the attention span to fully comprehend.

Flesh decays and little flowers bloom from within a narrow, sun-bleached jawbone when Ymir decides that they would like a form in addition to the gift of a name.

From a delicate shard of rib and blood-dyed river clay and the sweet seeds of a sunflower, Ymir crafts a container for their immutable power, and when next a twinkling dust mote weaves her trembling hand through that imperceptible stream, Ymir is there to catch her fingers and find reason to pause for breath against the constant current of time.


	8. Tecticolous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Tecticolous: (adj.) dwelling on roofs, situated on the roof of a building._
> 
> **please do not randomly jump off of roofs i promise you it is not a good idea even if it sounds like a good idea**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

Jean stands on the roof of his shared apartment, smoking slowly and staring over the edge, and swears that one day he’ll jump.

Not like _that._ There’s a neighboring roof about seven feet down, maybe eight. From there, if he runs, he can jump again to the next roof, and from there... who knows.

But even this first leap has his heart pounding in his throat.

So he perches at the edge like a gargoyle and smokes a few cigarettes, wondering and imagining the impossible, recreating all those YouTube videos on parkour in his head while the dying sun sets the red roof tiles ablaze.

Even if he’s not sprinting or rolling or flipping, standing here at the edge is still oddly calming. The idea that one day, _one day_ he could defy the ties that bind him to solid ground and break free sets his frustrated spirit at ease. He still believes in the possibility of flying, so he’s not completely dead inside. Not yet, anyway.

“Hey,” Eren mumbles, breaking the still quiet suspended far above the busy street. Jean blinks over at him as he lights a cigarette. “Thought I’d find you up here.”

Jean just shrugs, taking a drag off his own cigarette.

Eren watches Jean dream for a while, smoking in silence beside him, before he says, “I heard the gym’s gonna start offering classes, you know. Freerunning. It might be good to start there, less chance of you cracking your damn skull open.”

“Maybe,” Jean murmurs, his tired breath wreathing him in sunlit smoke like dragonfire for a brief moment.

Honestly, Jean thinks there isn’t really a point in taking a class. All that padding, all those people watching, still confined under a roof with someone else’s rules and directions... it’s not what he’s searching for. 

He wants to be _free._

The urge to fly is like a fire blazing deep within his bones, like a whisper from a past life urging him to lift his feet from his well-beaten path. He needs to breathe his own air, set his own rules, follow no direction but the impulse thunder of his straining heart. He knows Eren wants him to be safe, but he also knows Eren knows that Jean wants the direct opposite.

Eren knows that Jean just wants to feel alive again.

With a sigh, Jean flicks his cigarette off their roof, his hands sliding loosely into his pockets. Eren’s always been a fast smoker, so it doesn’t take him long to mirror the motion.

They turn together and stride back toward the door to the stairwell, their sunset shadows cast long and narrow behind them until they drop right off the low edge of the roof.

Sometimes, they don’t need to talk. Impulse is a language they share fluently.

Halfway to safety, they turn in unison and sprint back to the edge of the roof, and when they fly together, their thundering hearts pound in perfect synchrony.


	9. Nyctophile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Nyctophile: (n.) a person who loves night or darkness._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

Christa stopped pretending a while ago that she just enjoys stargazing.

She still tells her parents that her nighttime walks are purely in interest of appeasing her growing love for astronomy, but that’s only to keep them from worrying too much. If no one else, at least she’s honest with herself. No longer is she afraid of what it might mean that she feels most at ease when no ray of feeble light illuminates the walking path before her, when the bright blue of her wide eyes is but a pale ghost lingering at the edges of the enormous darkness adjusted to the gloom. 

She knows well the difference between dark and evil, a distinction she suspects still eludes her parents, as dear to her as they may be.

It is this knowledge that keeps her from running in terror when the darkness takes form before her one night, a trick of the shadows eased along by some whisper of a magic Christa knows dances just beyond the reach of her fingertips. She knows that the Cheshire grin flickering between the thin trunks of the trees is wreathed in nothing but shadow, and she knows too that this shade won’t hurt her. Maybe it’ll play with her a little, but she’s not so delicate that she can’t handle a simple trickster.

For weeks, the smiling shade doesn’t speak. It just toys with the edges of her vision, then brings her shiny little gifts like a grateful crow, then cautiously weaves in wisps between the curling ends of her golden hair. On the moonless evening of Christa’s sixteenth birthday, that Cheshire grin finally splits around a truly _awful_ joke, and the black eyes that alight above that smile reflect the shade’s surprise and delight at the tinkling sound of Christa’s bright laughter.

For years, that playful shade follows her, tickling her ankles from the shadows under furniture or dancing around her in the purposeful pitch black of her windowless bathroom. They become a welcome friend and companion, a carefully-guarded secret hidden well in the nooks and crannies of Christa’s badly-lit apartments. Her own personal little darkness, curious and sarcastic and notorious for reorganizing her messy bookshelves when she’s stuck working in the light too long.

On the moonless evening of Christa’s twenty-fifth birthday, the shade exhausts herself to run dark, solid fingers through shining golden curls and to shyly brush star-spotted lips against sweet pink, that lopsided Cheshire grin more corporeal than ever before. 

“For your birthday,” the shade murmurs, her cool breath dark like wood smoke, “I love you. The moon to my stars, the queen of my night.”

Christa laughs softly, her smile wet with happy tears as she whispers, “You’re so damn cheesy.”


	10. Plenilune

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Plenilune: (n.) the full moon._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

Not all magic depends on the constancy of the moon, but Armin finds that incorporating lunar cycling into his work adds a certain kind of artistic flair. Something like a signature, a hidden key to his spellcraft that makes it harder for the unlearned to replicate. Should he ever fade, only the best and brightest would be able to continue in his footsteps. Just how he likes it.

Sometimes, though, toying with the moon’s ancient magic has dangerous repercussions.

Under the deathly pallor of the full moon, the ashen earth of the old cemetery spirals along the delicate bone lines of Armin’s careful seal, and unintended sparks rain like hellfire from the paralyzed wings of the ill-timed raven caught in the crossfire of a dark and terrible new kind of alchemy. A perfect, grisly storm of interwoven magics amplified by the night’s fickle queen, with consequences that Armin understands far too late to prevent.

He never meant to curse mankind with these unholy creatures. 

He is gone before the spell can wear itself out, and long before the tumultuous soil begins to part under the frozen grasp of the recently deceased.

It is an unspoken law amongst experimental warlocks that one must never stir ripples across the still surface of Death’s domain.

As frantically as he researches, no matter how desperate his apologies, Armin knows that he doesn’t have enough time to set right what he has wronged before the thread of his fate is severed. He cannot run forever. The news headlines scream of a rising darkness like a virus infecting the resting dead, raising lost souls across the world, and Armin buries his horror in the bottom of a tumbler of whiskey. It was an accident, he sobs. An accident.

Vengeful Death follows in his every footstep, casting shadows over every calculation and theory, a creeping threat bleeding from between the yellowed pages of his spellbooks until it towers above him and tirelessly reminds him that his punishment is fast approaching.

Before he sinks defeated beneath the lifeless mire, Armin folds a scribbled note for the best and brightest between the pages of his journal, a desolate plea punctuating the half-finished cure for his accidental plague upon mankind.

_If any still remain in the shadow of what I’ve done, I beg of you._

_Forgive me._


	11. Osculant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Osculant: (adj.) pertaining to a close embrace or long kiss. Closely adhering or joined._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

Yearning is a weird feeling. Marco can’t decide if he likes it or not.

It was his idea in the first place, this secret they share. Eren keeps it gladly, because he knows what it’s like to be afraid of the world, even if he rolled with the punches with no small measure of grace when he finally came out. He doesn’t push, and when they’re with other people, he plays the game so damn well Marco swears Eren almost has him fooled too.

Marco knows, though. He knows what’s real, and in the light of the busy day, nothing is real but the empty spaces between his fingers aching for their perfect match.

Even though he’s scared, Marco can’t help but run the pads of his fingers over his own lips, remembering the warmth, the softness of Eren’s lingering there. When they’re all laughing at some joke a friend had cracked, his ears catch the sound of Eren’s amused chuckles over everyone else’s. When Eren’s outside smoking with Annie, Marco looks at his hands and knows that later, they’ll smell like smoke too, because his skin picks up the smell from Eren’s so damn quickly. 

Marco’s careful, though. He’s careful in how long he watches Eren breathe, in how close he gets when they brush past each other, in how casual he sounds when he offers him a ride home. Careful, careful, careful.

When they’re alone, Eren isn’t careful, and Marco’s heart could explode with how damn glad he is for it.

In the dark hallway, Marco doesn’t have to measure the distance between their bodies, so he obliterates it. In the quiet of his tiny apartment, he doesn’t have to count the ticking seconds that his hands clutch at the wrinkled fabric of Eren’s shirt, so he shoots out the noisy clock and clutches harder. With no witnesses to ask questions, Marco doesn’t have to keep himself from burying his face in the hot crook of Eren’s neck and inhaling, so he pulls deep the towering smell of cigarettes and spring grass and dark skin. 

Eren never brings it up, no matter how long and how fiercely Marco holds him, no matter how relieved Marco’s shallow breath sounds brushing across his ears. He just holds Marco too, his strong arms wrapped around his boyfriend’s neck, his fingers carding soothingly through soft black hair.

Marco lives for the moment he can finally crush Eren to him. Everything is a lie but the steady beat of Eren’s heart pounding right against his. Every moment is a test of his tightly-held control until he can finally relax his grip and hold onto something that really _matters._

One day, he thinks to himself. 

When he leans up and finally fills his starving lungs with Eren’s soft sighs, finally satisfies his maddening craving to breathe in the smoke between his lover’s lips, he feels a flutter of borrowed bravery stirring ripples across the stagnant surface of his cowardice. When Eren kisses him back, pushing back into him and clutching him just as tight, Marco drinks in the freedom Eren gifts to him with every caress of his sweet lips.

One day, Marco promises between kisses. One day, he murmurs with his shaking voice as his shaking hands gather Eren impossibly closer and his shaking heart settles beneath the steady tide of Eren’s unwavering love.

One day, Eren repeats, patient and understanding as his hands find Marco’s face, gently pulling his lips yet closer so he can whisper, but not today.


	12. Cryptid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Cryptid: (n.) a creature or plant whose existence has been suggested but is unrecognized by scientific consensus and often regarded as highly unlikely._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> i didn't even try to keep this one to 500 words oops

Jean does not believe in ghosts.

Why the hell would he? Sentience is a physical, measurable thing. The soul is a long, complex series of electrochemical signals. Death is the complete cessation of brain activity, a comforting fireworks show of dimethyltryptamine, and the only thing after that is blissful oblivion. You exist for a while, and then you don’t, and that is that.

It’s pessimistic. He knows it is. Jean is by no means an optimist, and he has faith in very few things he _can_ see, let alone shit he can’t. 

Ghosts are nothing but lies told by cruel parents to keep their children in bed until sunrise.

\--

The basement beneath his university’s chemistry building is a dark place, so unlike the rest of the bright, clean building. The concrete walls are an old, unforgiving rust brown. Most of the floor lies behind a battered chain-link fence, a locked collection of metal shelves stocked full of lab supplies and glassware and chemicals. At least half of the cheap, humming fluorescent lights flicker and fade at any given time. It smells awful.

Most people choose not to go down there if they don’t absolutely have to.

It’s a dark place, his colleagues say, and he feels nothing when he laughs right in their faces. It’s a bad place, he hears in their child voices, and he finds it ridiculous that people who call themselves scientists can cling to such childish superstitions.

Ridiculous.

\--

The new grad student is cute, he decides one evening. He’d caught a glimpse of her as she wandered up one of the main aisles, not sparing him a glance as she passed him and his work cart by. 

Then again, she looks kinda young, he thinks as he squints through a dusty shelf stocked with dusty glassware. Maybe she’s an undergrad lab tech on one of the other floors. Her slow footsteps continue, then turn down a row of shelves a ways back, and she doesn’t seem to pause for thought as she turns and makes her way back down the other main aisle. 

He checks her out when she passes him again, her empty hands hanging limp at her sides. She doesn’t look lost, but people who aren’t lost usually don’t wander aimlessly through restricted areas.

Jean finds the Erlenmeyers he needs and moves a good few to his work cart, and when the girl reaches the fence at the end of the aisle, she turns again, and then it sounds like she’s dragging her fingers along the thin steel as she slowly paces alongside it. The fence’s metallic rattling echoes hauntingly through the musty old air. If Jean wasn’t a grown-ass man, the sound would have his heart hammering in his throat.

When she reaches the gate, she doesn’t open it. She turns, and she starts up the other aisle again.

While Jean’s gathering glassware, she paces. Around and around and around, her boots slow and steady against the stained concrete, the rattling of the fence under her fingertips cracking through the thick silence.

He doesn’t see her on his way out, but as he’s locking the gate behind himself, he notices that her relentless pacing has ceased.

\--

The next time he’s down there, his trip is brief. He just needs more ammonia. 

Once he’s hauled the heavy jugs onto his cart with a few good _thuds,_ he grimaces and brushes his dusty hands against his jeans. He pauses for breath, rolling his shoulders as he does, and in the silence, he hears those footsteps.

Slow, steady, the heavy weight of aimlessly wandering boots, and this time he feels somewhat uneasy.

For some reason, he waits.

He waits still as stone as she paces up the aisle, coming closer, closer, his breath short when she comes level, his hair on end—

She continues past.

Jean lets out a slow breath, then silently chides himself for being nervous. She’s just a _girl._ A cute girl, too. Her short black hair has the prettiest shine under these shitty lights. Her skin’s kinda pale, though.

Maybe she’s just weird, he thinks as he wheels his cart out into the aisle. He could get used to weird, he muses indulgently, although when his ears catch the sound of her boots coming down the other aisle, he walks a little faster for reasons he can’t quite explain.

When he locks the gate behind himself, his hands are shaking, and the old air is still and silent.

\--

The next time he’s down there, it’s late at night, and he’s had his headphones in for too long to take them out now. He needs more glassware, though, to replace what his clumsy students had broken, and he’s determined to make a quick trip of it. 

He nods his head along to the beat as he scans down his list, pulling glassware off the shelves and barely paying attention to where he puts it. Flasks, beakers, a few rarely-used test tubes, one after the other from shelf to cart, shelf to cart.

The sudden tinkling sound of glass shattering jolts him out of unfocused autopilot. He blinks down at the list, then turns his gaze to the shards of what used to be a condenser littered across the floor beside him, sparkling in the unsteady light. Right where his cart had been seconds ago.

His brow furrows. Those frown lines only deepen when he looks up and finds his cart standing way out in the middle of the main aisle.

Slowly, Jean reaches up and pulls his earbuds out, listening for a snickering colleague or maybe the scuffle of running shoes. 

Nothing. Even after a few silent seconds, nothing.

With a short huff, Jean shakes his tired head. He must’ve bumped it away with his hip or something. It’s late and he’s exhausted.

When he turns away to go get the broom, the rest of his breath erupts from his lungs like it’d been punched out of him.

She’s so _pale,_ he thinks frantically, like snow or something, and she smells faintly like old coffee.

She’s _right there._ She’s so fucking close he can _smell_ her, and she’s cutting right through him with her stormcrow gaze.

_“Fuck,”_ he yelps after a long moment, stumbling backward. He catches himself on a shelf, and even the tinkling rattle of jostled glassware isn’t enough to break open the tight, crackling silence. “Shit, sorry, um,” Jean stammers, trying and failing to keep his voice from cracking. “You, uh, really snuck up on me.”

The girl doesn’t reply. She doesn’t even blink. She just stares.

“I, um.” Standing up straight, Jean takes another step back, wincing when glass splinters and grits beneath the heel of his boot. “I dropped a condenser.”

Nothing. It’s like she’s not even breathing. The yellowing light above them buzzes and flickers.

Jean swallows, unable to help the chills running down his spine. 

“A-are you, um.” He pauses to lick his dry lips. “Are you a grad student too?”

Finally, _finally_ she blinks, and Jean’s standstill heart finally beats again, thudding against his sternum so hard she can probably hear it. 

When she speaks, her voice is quiet and dusty like everything else in this place, and Jean barely hears her.

“Lift your foot.”

“Hah?” Confused and more than a little sweaty, Jean lifts his boot away from the shattered glass, and the tiny splinters wiggle and then fly across the floor between them. The bigger shards come too, spinning and bouncing and clinking across the concrete, and his eyes bug out of his head as they quickly piece themselves together again.

The girl tucks her dark hair behind her ear with one delicate hand, and she holds the other out to Jean, narrow palm facing up. He blinks dumbly at her, but once he does, he realizes that her hand isn’t actually empty. 

The repaired condenser shines in her palm, seamless and perfect as the day it was made.

His mouth hanging open, he stares at her, and she stares right back at him.

For lack of a better response, Jean passes the fuck out.

\--

Jean believes in ghosts.

He’s a scientist. He has answers for _everything._ Life is a long series of electrochemical impulses rocketing constantly through physical matter. Cause and effect, the scientific method, _basic fucking logic._

There are still mysteries science doesn’t have an answer for, he finally realizes. There are strange things chemistry cannot account for. There are things he may never understand as long as he lives.

The mystery in the basement of the university’s chemistry building has a name, and if it takes him as long as he lives, Jean wants to try to understand Mikasa.


	13. Choreomania

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Choreomania: (n.) an intense passion for dancing._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

Eren’s not cliché enough to admit that what first drew him to Marco, almost a month before he even heard that sweet voice, was the way he dances. 

Of fucking course it was. What else could it be? Marco is a _dancer,_ it makes sense that the way he moves his body would draw the eye. And as a photographer, it’s Eren’s job to find things that draw the eye and make them even more appealing. He’s awfully good at it, too. 

Not with Marco, though.

Every time Eren’s gone to the dance studio to take pictures for whatever fine arts freelance work sent him there, Marco’s been there too, and no matter how good Eren is with his camera, he has yet to take a picture of Marco that satisfies him. They’re _okay,_ sure, but they have nothing on the way Marco actually moves.

It’s his presence, or something. The raw physicality of his long, slender body, the way the dust mote sunbeams falling through the windows play across his skin in flickers and sparks, the intense _aura_ he gives off that only really hits you when you breathe it in like smoke.

Eren kind of hates him.

He’s never not been able to take a good picture of something. Shit, he even manages to make _Jean_ look good, and Jean is the least photogenic person on the face of the planet. But this guy, this dancer is constantly tripping Eren up, leaving him stumbling to keep his balance, and it drives him insane.

It might sound weird, but Eren has something like a hundred subpar shots of Marco lying around in various digital forms, and none of them even come close to the real thing. 

It’s so fucking cliché that it makes Eren nauseous.

So of course, _of course_ Murphy’s Law would have to come along and dropkick Eren directly into sappy rom-com territory, because Eren wakes up one morning and realizes that he’s fucking crazy in love with Marco. Or the idea of him, at least. Worst day ever.

The next time his job finds him at that dance studio, Marco’s there, same as always, and Eren hates him so damn much that he just wants to hold his hand and tell him how beautiful he is.

It’s with no small amount of gloom that Eren sets about trying to capture him again, his essence, his aura, and his misery only grows exponentially more severe when Marco actually _looks_ at him for once, because _god_ he’s so pretty it makes Eren want to pop. 

Just when Eren can’t get any unhappier, Marco smiles at him all dappled in sunlight, and he makes a ridiculous little gun-fingers motion and mouths _‘bang.’_

Eren blinks at him over the camera, raising his eyebrows in question.

“You’re shooting me, right?” Marco asks, his voice soft and warm like gross glittery liquid starlight metaphors, and all Eren can do is nod dumbly from where he’s crouched on the shiny wood floor. “I’m shooting you back.”

There’s no good response to that, so Eren just groans and buries his face in the crook of his elbow.

Not only is Marco perfect and hot as hellfire and completely unshootable, he’s also an enormous loser.

Eren’s so fucked.


	14. Xenagogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Xenagogue: (n.) a guide._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

_“I’ll teach you.”_

They’re fourteen when Marco says these words with a wide, innocent smile, his lips carefully pressed together because he’s still shy about his braces, even though Eren doesn’t think they’re as dorky as Marco makes them out to be. Rubber bands or not.

Marco spends so much time carefully teaching Eren how to do probability problems, because Eren always gets tripped up in the narrative concealing the function and their teacher has lost his patience with him. He goes slowly when he teaches Eren his trick to pulling out the necessary information, but not so slowly that Eren feels like he’s being coddled. He smiles so excitedly when something clicks and Eren starts _getting_ it, and even though he’s quick to press his lips together over his braces, the smile doesn’t fade for the rest of the afternoon, and Eren wonders if earning someone’s pride always feels this good.

The day they get their tests back, Marco bounds over to him at lunch and asks how it went, and Eren’s hands are still shaking and sweating as his fingers press folds into the first A he’s gotten in math since first grade.

When Eren cries a little, Marco doesn’t say anything about it, and they eat in comfortable, content silence bathed in spring sunlight.

_“I’ll teach you.”_

They’re nineteen when Eren says these words quietly, his lip caught between his teeth and his brow furrowed in concern as he rubs his hand gently over Marco’s shaking shoulders. Marco scrubs his wet eyes and nods, and he lets Eren insist upon a fifteen minute break before they get into it.

Eren buys them both coffee and they sit outside in the cool night while Eren smokes a lazy cigarette, watching Marco cautiously out of the corner of his eye because he’s _never_ seen Marco get so stressed before and it worries him more than he’d like to admit.

Marco softly admits that this physiology class is making him seriously consider changing majors, because he’s never felt quite so stupid in his entire life. He just can’t wrap his head around the intricacies of organic functioning, not the way it’s being taught, but he feels like everyone else just _gets it._

Pulling a long hit off his cigarette, Eren turns to look up at the midnight sky when he tells Marco that he isn’t stupid, that he just needs help, and that there’s no shame in that.

When they go back to their shared computer in the overnight lab, Eren grills Marco on immunology for seven straight hours and Marco almost kills him at least twice, but it’s worth it when something clicks and he starts _getting_ it.

Marco manages to pull his grade back up to a C before he swears off organic systems for the rest of his life, and the first person he calls is Eren.

_“I’ll teach you.”_

They’re twenty-four when Marco shakily whispers these words into Eren’s ear, clutching him tightly to his chest in the pouring rain. Eren’s wavering breath hitches as he clings to Marco and repeats that he doesn’t know how to be happy anymore, and again, and before he can insist that there’s something wrong with him, Marco kisses the words off his lips and swallows them.

Eren lets Marco take him inside and loan him some warm clothes, and he’s just as miserable dry as he was wet, but Marco hadn’t expected anything else. Even so, even as sad as Eren is, as flushed with tears and as broken and as tiny as he is, Marco still wraps his arms around him and leans into him, because he knows Eren just needs help.

He tells Eren that he loves him, _finally_ tells him after so many years of biting his tongue, and all Eren can do is stare. Marco tells him between soft kisses that he loves him now, when his hair is still drenched and curling at the ends and he smells like wet cigarettes, when he’s so unhappy that he can’t breathe, and that he loves him when he smiles and when he holds his head high, and that he loves every part of him between the two points even when Eren can’t love himself. 

When Eren breaks down and sobs against his chest, Marco keeps holding him tight, and he promises to help however he can, and that there’s no shame in needing help, because even though he’s sure Eren knows that somewhere, it can’t hurt to hear it once more.

There’s no click this time, no _getting_ it, but Marco’s fingers fit perfectly in the spaces between Eren’s, and that’s a good enough start for now.


	15. Cryptonym (NSFW)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Cryptonym: (n.) a secret name; codename or code word._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

“Hey,” breathed low across Marco’s ear, a sharp contrast to the pounding club music keeping them pressed tight together, sending a shiver down his spine and a smile across his flushed lips. “I think I left the oven on.”

“Mm.” Marco turns and looks at Eren through his eyelashes, matching his boyfriend’s pointed smirk. “Guess we should get out of here, huh.”

“Yeah. Don’t wanna burn the house down.”

Eren hasn’t touched the oven in more than a week. Marco knows that. He tells their friends that they’re heading out, his fingers twined with Eren’s, and they rush out of the club like they’re running from the damn cops.

They don’t exactly _need_ a codeword for situations like that, but both of them get a thrill out of saying the words in front of other people. Forgetting to turn the oven off sounds innocuous enough to most people, but to Eren and Marco, it’s something entirely different.

_‘I need to fuck you right now.’_

Like Pavlov’s dogs, by this point the words are enough to light a fire in both of them, and it works every time.

They barely make it through their front door, not with the way Marco’s got Eren pinned against it, with the way their lips meet in a messy rush, with the way Marco’s much more invested in fucking his hips against Eren’s than he is in getting the door unlocked.

They don’t make it past the narrow entryway. They rarely do.

The fire swells between them as they struggle to get each other’s clothes out of the way, kissing more with teeth and tongue than lips, hands pressing and clutching and squeezing, trembling fingers distracted by the heat of oversensitive skin desperate to be touched, until Marco turns Eren to face the wall and _grinds_ against him with a hitched groan.

Lucky that they keep supplies hidden in a rarely-used pair of shoes by the front door, because neither of them have the patience to pull away from each other, and Marco’s barely spread two fingers inside his boyfriend before Eren gets impatient.

“Come on, I’m _good, come on—”_

“Just—”

There’s no way they can last like this. Not that they want to, not now, not when they’re so _hot_ and everything is so _good,_ so _tight,_ when Eren’s head is leaned back onto Marco’s shoulder and his nails are scraping down smooth paint as he gasps for more, harder, _please._ The way Eren feels around him is sweet, perfect torture after all the buildup on the way home, and Marco can’t help but moan for him and give him what he needs, his hands pawing restlessly at dark skin in the hallway’s low light, holding and pulling as he bites and pants and relinquishes his control.

They don’t explicitly need a codeword, but when having one leads to the breathy, needy kinds of cries they pull out of each other not five feet into their apartment, it’s more than worth it.


	16. Deliciae (NSFW)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Deliciae: (n.) delight, pleasure; darling, sweetheart._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> this is like my fave trope don't look at me

Eren spent the first twenty years of his life making fun of couples who gave each other pet names. He just never saw the appeal. Honestly, he felt like it was kinda gross. What’s the benefit to calling someone ‘baby’ rather than their damn name? It always left a weird taste in his mouth.

His opinion stubbornly did not change when he started dating Marco, although they could not disagree more on the subject. Marco _loves_ goopy couple names, just like he loves goopy couple bullshit, and Eren never misses an opportunity to tease him about it. (The teasing kind of lost its edge when Eren willingly went on a romantic picnic lunch with Marco. He still gets embarrassed about how much he enjoyed it.)

As staunchly against pet names as Eren is, Marco does his best not to use them, although he can’t help slipping up here and there. Eren can tolerate the occasional ‘babe’ punctuating Marco’s exasperation, or maybe a sleepily-mumbled ‘darling’ if Marco’s clearly not awake yet. He can live with that. He absolutely draws the line at ‘angel,’ though, and Marco’s sure never to make _that_ mistake again. Not with the way Eren turned flaming red and refused to speak to him for an entire day.

They’re together for a few years this way, with Marco biting down sweetness in interest of not making Eren gag, until the day Marco accidentally discovers the one exception to the rule.

For _years,_ Marco’s been extra careful not to slip up when he and Eren are having sex. Getting kicked out of bed and left to rot would be a nightmare. He can’t help it this time, though, because morning sex is his favorite thing in the entire world and Eren’s so pliant beneath him, panting against the sheets and rocking his hips back into Marco’s lazy thrusts and making all these gorgeous little noises, and Marco’s so overwhelmed with love and pleasure that the word just kinda falls out between hot, wet kisses trailed along Eren’s neck.

“Oh, _sweetheart...”_

Marco bites his tongue immediately, hoping to god that Eren didn’t notice, but with the way his boyfriend’s tightening and tensing beneath him, it’s kind of a long shot. He waits for the scoff, or for Eren to groan and buck him off, pausing to grind deep for a moment while Eren processes what just happened.

What Marco doesn’t expect is the way Eren _melts,_ burying his face in a pillow with a flustered, wavering little whine as he spreads his trembling thighs further and arches his back for more, every part of him flushed and shaking.

By now, Marco knows not to ask questions. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s been teasing his cock hard against Eren’s sweet spot for what feels like hours, or if it’s because Eren’s still sleepy, or if this is all just a vivid wet dream, but he’s gonna milk it for all it’s worth.

Eren twitches and whimpers every time Marco breathes the word into his ear, every time Marco’s rough, hot voice drips like honey thick with sweet names and whispered praises, until Eren’s fisting his weak hands in the sheets and gasping his boyfriend’s name as he comes untouched, riding out the gentle waves of his orgasm wrapped in the warmth of Marco’s affection.

Later, when they finally roll out of bed, Eren pins Marco with a mortified stare over his coffee and wheezes, _“Please_ don’t make fun of me.”

“I wouldn’t make fun of you,” Marco laughs softly, shooting him a reassuring smile. “Is that why you never let me call you cute names?”

Eren shrugs and rubs the back of his neck as he stares at the counter. “I mean, I didn’t _think_ so. I just thought they were embarrassing.”

Marco hums lightly and scoots over to press a warm kiss to Eren’s temple, squeezing his bare waist gently. “I won’t make fun of you, I promise,” he says, and just as Eren’s starting to relax, Marco dips and catches his earlobe between his teeth with a rumbling moan, teasing for just a moment before he whispers, _“Sweetheart.”_

Groaning loudly, Eren tilts his head back and squeezes his eyes shut, but his body is already blatantly ignoring his pride as his cock twitches in his pants.


	17. Eidolon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Eidolon: (n.) a wistful daydream; a phantom, apparition, ghost._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

To say Eren daydreams sometimes would be a pretty massive understatement. To say that sometimes he pines a little would be an equally massive understatement. To say that he has a bit of a crush on one of his classmates would be a bigger understatement than the previous two combined.

It’s not like he could avoid it, though. They’re both junior year psychology majors, they both picked Arabic for their language requirement, they both live in the Sina dorm block, and neither of them are morning people.

Thanks to a freak twist of fate or administration, Marco Bodt is literally everywhere Eren goes, and _god_ he’s attractive. And smart, and funny, and popular, not that that matters much in college. All it means for Eren is that he sees Marco all the goddamn time, but every time he sees him, Marco’s already talking to at least one friend of his. He’s always surrounded.

So, Eren daydreams. He wonders what Marco does when he’s not studying, where he goes over breaks, whether Marco’s applying for the language exchange to Oman next summer... everything. 

It’s not that Eren’s unpopular, nor is he particularly lonely. He has friends and local family, and he has more than enough hobbies to occupy his time when he’s not doing schoolwork. He likes his classes and his teachers well enough, the material even more so. Having Marco in every class is just a good-looking bonus to Eren’s already fulfilled life.

Still, sometimes Eren has wild, extended fantasies about kissing those plush lips. It happens. Sometimes he also has wild, extended fantasies about making Marco laugh that loud, sweet Disney prince laugh, despite the fact that Eren knows exactly one joke. Every time he imagines it, he conveniently skips the part where he’s charming and gets right to the part where Marco thinks he’s hilarious.

Toward the end of their junior year, he discovers that Marco is also a major night owl when both of them are standing in the (suspiciously empty) 24-hour Starbucks in the tech center at three in the morning.

“Maybe they went on break,” Marco hums after looking around for the absent cashier, his tired eyes settling on Eren’s. Eren just does something that is equal parts nodding, shaking his head, and shrugging. It comes out like more of a spasm than anything else, but Marco just smiles and understands. “I mean, if they were closed, they’d lock the doors, right?”

“Yeah, probably,” Eren mumbles, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

“Hey, wait a second,” Marco says, turning to face Eren properly. “I know you.” 

“O-oh yeah?” Trying to laugh suavely, Eren stuffs his hands in his pockets and raises his thick eyebrows.

“Yeah...” Marco snaps his fingers. “Yeah! You live in my dorm. And you’re in all my classes. Like, _all_ of them.”

“Guilty.”

“Why haven’t we talked before now?” Marco chuckles, glancing away bashfully, and Eren’s chest kind of does some weird googly crush thing. “I’m sorry, that’s super awkward of me.”

“Hey, I never talked to you before, either.” Eren casually doesn’t mention that the sole reason for that is because this is the first time they’ve ever been alone together. He’s not sure whether or not that’s creepy.

“And yet, here we are. Scenic abandoned Starbucks.” Eren snorts, a wide grin spreading across his face. Marco extends his hand and continues, “I’m Marco. Good to officially meet you.”

Eren shakes Marco’s hand, hoping to god his isn’t sweaty. “Eren. Same.”

They get to talking about why exactly they’re standing in a vacant Starbucks at three in the morning, mutually complaining about the assignment currently imprisoning the both of them in the overnight lab, and by time the barista rolls out from beneath whatever rock they’d been sleeping under, Eren has Marco’s phone number and a crush exponentially larger than it had been before.


	18. Suppalpation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Suppalpation: (n.) gaining affection by caressing; the act of enticing by soft words._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> how many times can i write this trope, you ask? all the times. all of them.

To say that Jean has Eren wrapped around his little finger is a fairly monolithic understatement. 

Eren used to think that Jean’s weird brand of charm was smarmy. Slimy, even. Jean never has any problem getting his way with people, not with the way he grins crookedly and runs a hand through his artfully disheveled hair, not with how he tends to look at people from under the tempting shade of his long, dark eyelashes. 

Mega-slimy.

At least, that’s how Eren saw it before Jean started aiming those looks his way, for whatever godforsaken reason. Once those liquid-honey eyes made a habit of finding Eren’s, and then of drilling straight past his carefully constructed internal walls and fences, Jean suddenly seemed a lot less slimy and lot more... stunning. As nauseous as it makes Eren to admit. 

Clearly, Jean is some sort of preternatural evil.

Eren tells him this fairly regularly. Usually after Jean’s weaseled his way into Eren’s good graces with a carefully-timed, lingering glance, then with an enticing slip of his tongue over thin, pretty lips. Lord knows it’s a short enough path from Eren’s good graces to Eren’s good set of sheets to begin with, but Jean somehow found a way to make the trip even shorter.

“You must be some kind of evil sex demon,” Eren complains one day, still trying to catch his breath as he stares dazedly up at his ceiling.

“I thought I was a warlock,” Jean laughs, his arm thrown over his face, that brain-melting gaze tucked safely away in the sweat-slick bend of his elbow.

“That was last week’s theory.” Running a hand down his face, Eren muses, “Considering how quickly I went from wanting to break your face to wanting to fuck it earlier, you must be something beyond normal human comprehension.”

Jean snorts loudly, that crooked grin already spreading across his flushed face again as he teases, “Since when are _you_ a normal human?” Eren just grumbles. “Dude, why can’t you just admit that you have the hots for me?”

“Oh, I definitely have the hots for you. It’s just that they’re supernatural hots. Hots not of this earth.”

“So you’re _really_ into me, then,” Jean snickers. He casually bends one knee up, and the edge of the light sheet slips down his bare thigh and pools in the join of his hip, and Eren can’t quite remember what they were talking about. “You’re such an alien, man,” the blonde continues after a long, content sigh. “Are you usually this weird with people you’re into?”

“It’s a curse,” Eren mumbles distractedly. He licks his dry lips then, rolling onto his side to face Jean, as ill-advised as that might be. Jean’s skin is too hypnotizing like this, still musky from the wild, otherworldly sex they’d spent most of the afternoon having, soft, pale expanses marked all up and down with dark hickeys and bite marks and maybe a flushed handprint or two. Not like Eren’s much different, with stark red welts from Jean’s short nails burning faintly all along his ribs, his shoulders, especially on his hips. But still.

“I can feel that look, you know,” Jean hums, peering out at Eren from under his arm with a smirk. “Feels like you’re gonna eat me or something.”

“If I do, will the curse be lifted?”

“Jesus _Christ,_ ” Jean snorts, rolling to face Eren as well. He slings his arm casually over Eren’s waist, then snuggles even closer to him, squishing his cheek against the brunette’s chest with a soft laugh. “You’re a goddamn lunatic.”

Eren shrugs tensely, trying not to let himself fall victim to the tempting smell of Jean’s hair, particularly the stubbornly-lingering peach scent of his shampoo.

After a while, Jean hitches his thigh over Eren’s and mumbles, “You know...”

“Hm?”

“I don’t, uh. I don’t do this with everyone,” the blonde mutters, idle fingers drawing patterns in Eren’s warm skin. 

Blinking perplexedly, Eren squints at the wall for a moment before replying. “Okay...?”

With an agitated huff, Jean rolls onto his back again, his expression inexplicably flustered, almost shy. “I _mean,_ I’m not sleeping with anyone else. Just you.” Eren stays cautiously silent, because he’s still not entirely sure what Jean’s getting at. Rolling his eyes loudly, Jean drags his hands down his face, then shakes his head. “Never mind.”

“No, what?”

“Never _mind,_ Jaeger, Jesus,” Jean grouses, sitting up and swinging his feet out of bed. 

Eren may not quite get what Jean’s trying to say, but he knows that Jean leaving before he manages it could be more than a little disastrous. Before he can think too much about it, he shoots across the bed after the blonde and wraps one arm around Jean’s narrow hips, murmuring, “Don’t go...”

Unexpectedly, Jean tenses at the gentle touch, and when he stares down at him, Eren moves closer and starts dragging his lips lightly over Jean’s bony hip. He presses more than a fair few sweet, lingering kisses there, particularly over the reddening indentations his teeth had left earlier, before he glances up at Jean through his eyelashes, eyebrows raised in question.

“Shit,” Jean mumbles, his cool demeanor totally slipping off his flushed face as he swallows heavily, unable to look away. “And you think _I’m_ the warlock...”

Suddenly, Eren thinks he might get what Jean was trying to say earlier.

Sighing slowly, he nuzzles Jean’s hip some more, curling his body around the blonde’s and wrapping himself yet further around him, until Jean succumbs to his warm, clingy embrace with a disgruntled grumble.

A few hours later, they leave Eren’s apartment to get coffee and walk around, and Eren feels like Jean might not be quite as sinister as he’d been led to believe.

In fact, to say that Eren has Jean wrapped around his little finger might be something of a monolithic understatement.


	19. Charientism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Charientism: (n.) a figure of speech wherein a taunting expression or insult is softened by a jest._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

It’s not like Jean _means_ for the shit he says to Eren to come out the way it does. He can’t help it. The second he manages to catch Eren’s attention, the second those intense eyes swing his way, Jean’s brain short-circuits and he loses control of his mouth altogether. The results can only ever be described as ‘disastrous.’

He knows Eren’s not an idiot. He’s also not terribly clumsy, although he’s not exactly graceful most of the time, either. He’s not as short as Jean makes him out to be, and he’s not a meathead, and he’s certainly not weird-looking.

This does not stop Jean from getting tongue-tied and accidentally calling him any combination of the above.

Luckily, over the years Eren’s temper has evened out, as has his tolerance for Jean’s bullshit. Now that they’re older, he has the good grace to roll his eyes and snark right back at Jean, seemingly oblivious to the way Jean’s face flushes stupidly bright every time.

Jean eventually learns that as long as he doesn’t make eye contact with Eren, he’s safe. 

At first a blessing, this realization quickly becomes a curse when Eren (always more observant than he’s given credit for) picks up on it.

“You know, Kirschtein,” he sighs one day, casually lacing his fingers over the back of his neck, “Why is it that you’re only ever nice to me when you’re standing behind me? You like my ass that much?”

Jean promptly chokes to death on his coffee.

After a brief shouting match (mostly initiated and prolonged by Jean’s ineptitude), they go their separate ways in a huff, and Eren’s irate jeers of _‘get your shit together, you goddamn ass hound’_ follow Jean all the way home and straight into his nightmares.

\--

The next day, Armin has his usual pitying head shake for Jean, having long since given up on trying to cure him of his brain-to-mouth failings. “Honestly, Jean,” he sighs mournfully as he accepts the hot coffee Jean had brought for him, “Why don’t you just tell him you like him, instead of pretending you’re still in first grade?”

“I can’t help it,” Jean groans miserably, slumping forward across their shared desk, unconcerned for the way Armin’s notes are crumpling under his smooshed cheek. “He breaks me. I hate him.”

“You _love_ him,” Armin correctly translates.

“He’s the worst.”

“He’s your favorite.”

_“Ugh.”_

Armin sighs loudly, then pushes Jean’s head off his notes so he can continue with them, his patience for Jean’s shit apparently expended for the day.

He has a point, though, and Jean knows it.

\--

The only safe place for Eren and Jean to talk is somewhere where Eren can’t stare at him. Given the extreme lack of confessional booths nearby, that pretty much just leaves text messaging.

Jean agonizes over what to say for something like three hours before he finally gets frustrated and gives up.

**To: Eren**  
your ass may be fat as hell, but ya, it’s pretty nice

An hour goes by with no response. Jean may or may not have rammed his head through the drywall in his room several times over by the time his phone chimes again.

**From: Eren**   
jesus christ jean what is ur damage 

At this point, all Jean has is honesty. And possibly a concussion.

**To: Eren**  
i’m sorry  
i really am  
i don’t do so good with people

**From: Eren**  
u think????

**To: Eren**  
:’C  
i know i suck  
trust me i have courtside seats every time i fuck up and say something shitty to you  
and i have totally earned every cold shoulder you could ever wanna give me  
and idk why you even still bother  
i’m the worst i know

**From: Eren**   
soooo what  
i know u suck, u know u suck...  
what is it u want exactly??

**To: Eren**   
idk man  
i really don’t know

**From: Eren**   
jean  
get ur shit together  
and ask me out

Jean literally falls off his bed.

**To: Eren**   
??????????

**From: Eren**  
UR SO DUMB I CAN’T WITH U FUCK  
BUY ME DINNER U SHIT  
I KNOW U LIKE ME UR JUST A FUCKN TODDLER ABOUT IT

**To: Eren**   
are you gonna yell at me the whole time

**From: Eren**  
i mean probably  
but dude that’s how we roll  
ur kinda cute when ur stupid  
i’ve been flirting with ur dumb ass hardcore for like six months man c’mon

**To: Eren**  
... oh  
sorry i couldn’t tell  
i was too busy you know dying inside every time i opened my mouth around you

**From: Eren**  
u and me both  
come by my place at 7  
we’ll get shitty chinese food and wrestle for the last crab rangoon  
and maybe make out if u don’t explode first  
okay???

**To: Eren**   
... okay

**From: Eren**   
fuckn nerd  
<3

**To: Eren**   
you asshole  
<333


	20. Natalicious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Natalicious: (adj.) of or pertaining to one’s birth or birthday._
> 
> (canonverse)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com) and also a chronic inability to follow the prompt

“You should respect your elders.”

Jean snarls, hands fisted at his side, and his aggression has exactly no effect on Eren’s obnoxious smirk. “You’re older by a fucking week, Jaeger! A _week._ Fuck off with that.”

Eren shrugs, arms crossed lazily over his chest, and he doesn’t even bother to stop leaning casually against the barracks wall. “Still older.”

“You’re fucking _short,_ too. I could kick your ass all up and down this fucking compound.”

“In your dreams.”

Growling frustratedly, Jean turns on his heel and digs his hands into his hair, trying to will his blood pressure down. “Why do you _always_ have to start shit with me, man? It’s always _me._ ”

When Eren doesn’t respond, Jean turns to face him again, his spine still ramrod-straight, shoulders tense. The brunette’s looking down at the floor, though, and he’s finally dropped that douchey expression. After a long moment, he sighs, then blinks up at Jean again. “If it means so damn much to you, take the top bunk. I’m too tired to deal with your bullshit anymore.”

And with that, Eren drops into the low bed, rolling right up against the wall and pulling the blanket over his ears.

Jean rolls his eyes. Trust Jaeger to give up after a solid thirty minutes of fighting over who gets the top bunk. “If it was so fucking easy, why didn’t you just _do it?”_

Eren doesn’t respond, but Jean isn’t surprised. After a long, awkward silence, he huffs, then climbs up into the top bunk, and he falls asleep without thinking anything more of it.

\--

The next morning, Eren looks like shit, but Jean feels fantastic. Maybe it’s his lucky day or something.

He keeps his chin high and swaggers through training all the way until lunch, and as he crams bread into his face, he ponders ways to beat Eren’s ass at 3DMG training that afternoon. At least, until Mikasa slides onto the bench on the other side of the table, her face as stony and gorgeous as always.

Jean chokes on his bread. It’s terrible.

Mikasa waits patiently while Jean sorts his life out, already wishing the floor would swallow him whole.

“H-hey,” he coughs. “Um.”

“Let Eren have the top bunk,” she says smoothly, her strong hands folded in her lap. Jean’s eyebrows shoot up, his confusion evident.

“... Why?”

She blinks slowly at him, completely unfazed by his nervous sweating. Then she blinks again, still silent, and Jean’s about to pass out from nerves when she finally replies, “He doesn’t sleep well in the bottom bunk.”

Jean frowns, leaning forward and crossing his arms on the table. “Why, exactly?”

Her intense gaze falls to the rough grain of the table between them, and he watches her contemplate the swirling patterns for what feels like an eternity. Mostly so he can stare at her without his jerkass blabbermouth ruining his life.

Eventually, she sighs and stands again, and she tucks her pretty black hair behind her ear as she murmurs, “He likes to be away from the ground.”

“So do I!”

“I don’t care.”

And with that, she turns and walks away, and Jean’s ego is, as usual, completely demolished.

\--

It’s almost ten years later when Eren finally tells Jean about the day the world fell. What he saw, what he felt, awful things carved into his soft child brain like knotted, gnarled scars for the rest of his uncertain life. 

Suddenly, Jean remembers all those arguments, and now everything makes perfect sense. Eren’s bottom bunk insomnia, his insistence upon occupying the top everything, the way he’d jolt whenever an old building creaked as it settled. Everything.

And now Jean feels like an asshole, because for ten years, he’d bitched at him for being childish without ever realizing that Eren never got over his not-so-irrational fear of being crushed to death just like his mother.

They sleep side by side these days, instead of one on top of the other, but now that he understands Eren a little better, Jean takes special care to find ways that he can be solid ground beneath Eren’s shaky feet.


	21. Vernalagnia (NSFW)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Vernalagnia: (n.) an increase in sexual desire which occurs in the spring._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> bro sometimes you just gotta write blowjobs amirite

Jean figures it must officially be spring when he wakes up one morning with his cock already in Marco’s mouth.

He groans roughly, scrubbing one hand down his face, but Marco distracts him even from that by hollowing his cheeks around him and twisting his tongue against him with a muffled hum. He goes about his business then, bobbing his head languidly over Jean’s cock, and when Jean peels open his eyes and lifts up the sheet to stare at him, Marco just blinks cutely and swallows around him.

Once his head’s stopped reeling from the sensation, Jean reaches down and runs his fingers through Marco’s bed-mussed hair, then mumbles, “Morning t’you too.”

Marco hums his reply, his nose buried in the soft blonde curls at the base of Jean’s cock, and Jean has to squeeze his eyes shut to not lose his cool altogether. Marco swallows again, graciously allowing Jean to arch up into his mouth with a wavering moan, before he pulls off and strokes him evenly instead, chuckling warmly at his boyfriend. 

This isn’t all that uncommon for them. For whatever reason, between the months of March and May, Marco’s already impressive thirst ramps itself right up to eleven. Something about the rain or the pollen or the flowers or whatever. It’s been this way for years, and Jean is far from complaining.

“Do you know what day it is?” Marco asks softly, licking his lips as he looks up at Jean, twisting his wrist around the head in a way that has Jean’s hips stuttering. 

Jean pulls the sheet up over his head so he can see Marco more easily, freeing up his hands to play with Marco’s hair, to brush along the soft line of his jaw instead. “Dunno,” he rasps finally, trying his very best to remember. “Tuesday?”

Marco laughs sweetly, then shakes his head, his teeth catching his flushed lip. “Not even close. It’s _Thursday,_ to begin with.”

“Whoops.”

“More importantly,” Marco hums, just before he closes his eyes and presses a hot, wet kiss to the head of Jean’s cock, his eyelashes fluttering alluringly. Jean’s cock twitches in his hand, earning him a pretty smile. “It’s your birthday.”

“Oh,” Jean wheezes. He squints at the sheet stretched over them, still not entirely with it in the brains department. “N-neat.”

Marco snorts at that, mumbling a soft, “Dork,” before he shifts down and angles Jean’s cock between his lips again, humming as he sets to slowly, steadily bobbing his head over him, his free hand resting easily on Jean’s bony hip. 

Melting helplessly under Marco’s attention, Jean curls his fingers into the soft hair behind Marco’s ear with a sigh, spreading his thighs further apart to give his boyfriend more room to move.

Having a spring birthday has never worked out in his favor as much as it has with Marco. Every April 7th for last five years, it had poured rain all day, and today sounds like it’s no different. Rather than being a huge bummer, though, rainy birthdays in spring mean an entire day of rad birthday sex for Jean, which is usually more exciting for him than anything that involves them leaving the house.

Jean groans raggedly and rocks his hips up into Marco’s mouth when the brunette picks up his pace, firmly stroking the base of his cock in time with his lips. He’s always more sensitive in the morning, and Marco’s fucking _incredible_ at what he does, so it’s not long before Jean’s fisting his hand lightly in Marco’s hair and stuttering out a breathy warning.

As usual, Marco carries him perfectly through a rather brain-melting orgasm, swallowing everything Jean has for him with a content moan. He pulls off slowly, pressing a wet kiss to the sensitive head before Jean reaches down and tugs him up the bed, craving his warmth over him. 

Perched easily in Jean’s lap, Marco lets his boyfriend pull him into a lazy, breathless kiss, smiling against his lips at the way Jean’s fingers comb appreciatively through his hair. 

“Mm, so,” Marco murmurs after a few minutes, once Jean’s recovered enough to start nibbling at his lips, his hands sliding languidly up and down the soft curve of Marco’s spine, “What d’you want for your birthday, old man?”

Jean groans, playfully pinching Marco’s ass. “Who’s the old man?” Marco just laughs, the sound warm and sweet, leaving Jean hopelessly lovestruck under him. Shaking his head, Jean leans up and trails slow kisses up the line of Marco’s neck, rumbling as Marco tilts his head aside for more. “Same thing as last year,” Jean finally replies, sucking Marco’s earlobe between his lips as his fingers curve around Marco’s bare ass and squeeze appreciatively. 

“That’s it?” Marco chuckles, biting his lip around a crooked grin, his eyes fluttering closed. “We didn’t even get you a cake last year.”

“I only want cake if I can eat it off you,” Jean mumbles, teasingly grinding his hips up against Marco. Marco shivers out a quiet sigh and leans his head back, spreading his thighs further over Jean’s lap, his own slick arousal sliding against Jean’s flat stomach. 

“Th-that sounds messy.”

“Sounds _awesome.”_

Marco shakes his head and tugs on Jean’s hair, pulling him into another long, lazy kiss. “Not the whole cake,” he murmurs after a while, nudging his nose against Jean’s. “The crumbs would be a nightmare.”

“Frosting?” Jean asks, grinning against Marco’s lips.

“If that’s what you want,” Marco snickers. Jean hums and nods his approval, then flips them over with a quick twist of his hips, settling easily over his boyfriend. Marco wraps his legs around Jean’s waist and grins up at him as he pulls him down for more kisses, content with their bargain.

Whether or not they’ll actually make it out of the house long enough to buy frosting is anyone’s guess, but they have the whole day to find out.


	22. Impluvious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Impluvious: (adj.) soaked with rain._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

Marco knows it’s raining without even having to look outside. He can hear it trickling and pattering on the roof, sure, but he knows for sure when he opens his door to a dripping wet, grinning Eren. It’s a _very_ good look for him.

Ignoring the way his heart skips a few beats, Marco steps aside to let Eren in and smiles as the brunette gives his head a good, solid shake, sending raindrops everywhere. 

“It’s _pouring_ out,” Eren says redundantly. He turns to grin up at Marco as he peels his drenched hoodie off, letting Marco take it from him to hang up. 

“Do you even own an umbrella?” Marco laughs, raising an eyebrow and crossing his arms once he’s draped Eren’s hoodie across the back of his desk chair. 

Eren shrugs idly, running a hand through his wet bangs before moving to flop comfortably on Marco’s couch. “They’re a pain in the ass to carry around. I never remember to bring them, anyway, so I gave up on it.”

As Marco wanders over to the couch, Eren reaches out for his hand and tugs him closer, grinning up at him as he does, his eyes all easy, sparkling warmth. Marco chuckles quietly and lets Eren pull him into his lap, straddling him comfortably before leaning in for a soft, sweet kiss.

“Missed you,” Marco breathes against Eren’s lips, gently threading his fingers into Eren’s wet hair. Eren hums contently and nuzzles against him, wrapping his strong arms around Marco’s waist and holding him against his chest. Marco sighs against him and pushes his bangs back off his face, wincing slightly at the damp tangles that catch around his knuckles. “You know, they make impressively tiny umbrellas these days,” he laughs, leaning back enough to quirk an eyebrow at his boyfriend. “You could just leave one in your bag or something.”

“I could,” Eren snickers, leaning up to chase Marco’s lips with his. “Or I could keep giving you half-chubs just by showing up at your apartment all dripping wet.”

Marco sniffs and pinches Eren’s cheeks. “You’re gonna get sick that way, you know.”

“Meh.”

Grinning widely, Marco pokes Eren’s nose and teases, “And then when you’re being a giant baby because you have a cold, I’m gonna have to nurse you back to health.”

“Aw, I thought you liked spoiling me,” Eren laughs, tilting his head so he can playfully bite at Marco’s fingers.

“I _do,_ ” Marco sighs. “But it’s much better when you’re not too hopped up on cold medicine to enjoy it.” He smiles warmly and ducks in for another kiss before he continues, “Besides, it’s not like you have to try very hard to get to me.”

“That’s true,” Eren says, not bothering to stifle his grin as he sucks lightly on Marco’s lower lip, his cold fingers sneaking up the back of Marco’s shirt. Marco huffs at the chill, but he lets Eren warm his hands up on his skin, comfortably sliding his arms around Eren’s neck as he leans into him.

Marco lets Eren distract him for a while longer, melting easily into his kisses and his soft touches, before he remembers why Eren had trudged all the way across campus in the rain to begin with. “Hey,” he says, tugging lightly on Eren’s messy hair. “Wasn’t I supposed to be quizzing you for that test you have tomorrow?”

“Oh yeah,” Eren mumbles, leaning up to catch Marco’s lips again. He slips his tongue between them, coaxing Marco into a much more distracting sort of kiss for a moment, until Marco pulls back and gives him a pointed, albeit flushed, look. Eren laughs and slumps back against the couch, sliding his thumbs under the waistband of Marco’s jeans. “It’s on anatomy. Got all we need right here.”

Marco laughs loudly, pushing his hand against Eren’s grinning face. “Okay, first of all, you took anatomy _last_ semester.” Before Eren can object, Marco pinches his nose gently and continues, “And you also used that same cheesy line last semester, as I recall.”

Eren snickers and shrugs, conceding defeat. “It worked so well I thought I’d try again.”

“Uh-huh.” Marco shakes his head, then reaches between them and walks his fingers across Eren’s lap, ignoring the obvious bulge tenting his zipper, until his hand brushes across a bulge in Eren’s pocket of a significantly less sexy variety. Eren bites his lip around a grin and tries to angle his hips up more favorably, but Marco just snorts at him and fishes his slightly damp flash cards out of his pocket.

“Aw, c’mon,” Eren pleads, leaning forward to bury his face in Marco’s chest. “Five more minutes.”

Marco rolls his eyes, then contemplates the thick stack of flash cards in his hand, held together by a hair tie. Whether the tie belongs to Eren, Mikasa, or Armin is anyone’s guess. “How about this,” he says after a second, tilting Eren’s face up toward him. “Five more minutes, and that’s it. And then, if you do well, we can do whatever you want for the rest of the night.”

Eren’s face brightens at that, quick to nod his eager approval. 

The five minute rule is sternly enforced, much to Eren’s disgruntlement, but thankfully, he’d spent his free time in the morning studying his ass off in anticipation of just such a bargain. It’s not like Marco doesn’t know that, but he’s proud of Eren either way, and they finish with more than enough time to do whatever Eren wants several times over.


End file.
